Yesterday was… a strange day. We’re finally owners of our own home. As we were finalizing that, we found out that my husband’s grandfather died. Literally in the office, turning in the final papers, and got the call. Strange day. I won’t lapse into details on either of those, but let’s say we’re glad the home is ours and sad to lose someone, though he was also 99 and lived a mighty fine life.

I’d been planning a date with hubby and just decided to go with it anyway since he needed the cheering up I think. We went to Outpost to pick up a couple Ice Wolves stickers and ended up seeing part of the PWB game our PeeWee Ice Wolves team vs Durango Steamers. They were actually really cute and pretty damn good. I didn’t want to linger because I was pretty sure we needed to pay and hadn’t since I’d gone to the shop in the back, so we left probably before either of us wanted to and I sadly have no pictures of them. But trust me, it’s adorable.

We went to a nice dinner and then went to the UNM Lobos Hockey Club game (vs Colorado Miners). UNM got brutally thrashed, a 7:0 final score. I kept having to remind myself that they’re a hockey club, not a standard college team. There’s intense differences. They’re doing it for fun, as a club, not as people trying to climb the ladder to their careers like our NAHL Ice Wolves are. There’s an intense difference in game play because of that. It’s slower, more relaxed, far less checking (as in they barely clunked into the boards the few times they did). Someone got a match penalty over what I’m pretty sure were just spoken words. I have no idea what they could have said to have that decision, but it happened.

There was straight up a fight where no one got a match penalty and frankly, should have. One of the Miners used his stick to strangle one of the UNM players from behind. There were several other fights wherein up to 5 people ended up in the penalty boxes. What a mess.

They use the smaller rink at Outpost and while it’s interesting because you can see the ice better due to the elevation of the seats, it felt strange and slightly uncomfortable, probably just because most of my hockey experience is on the other rink.

Either way, we ended up sitting in the lobby area against the glass so we could watch that game and also watch the Ice Wolves game on the TVs in the center of the arena. Proud of our Ice Wolves last night. We pulled the Ice Dogs into overtime with at 3:3 score and despite the loss in OT, it was still a beautifully played game and it shows how much progress they’ve made. Even without the big W I hope they feel good about it and keep it together the next three games in Alaska. Got my fingers crossed for them!